


Of Fevers

by revolutionarygold



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fevers, Flashbacks, Grieving, alex lowkey has ptsd, also apparently i enjoy mildly hurting the hamilton kids?? esp to alex's detriment??? who kne w, goes without saying but uh, good dad!hamilton, he's kind of a jerk but he's trying, james is alex's brother, non graphic tho, phillip is literally 7 months old, this is mostly about Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6809362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionarygold/pseuds/revolutionarygold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Phillip comes down with a fever, Alex has a panic attack that nearly keeps him from moving. But he has to move - he has to get home to his son. | a story in two parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Fevers

“Son?”

Alex couldn’t respond. Not to Washington, not even to Eliza. Admittedly, the second one’s text was more important. All he could do was stare at his phone and the text thread that was pulled up.

“Alexander!”

Still he couldn’t respond to his old professor. Alex heard Washington. He knew that the older man was about forty five seconds away from looking at his phone to figure out what exactly had Alex so freaked out.  
“I- I have to go.”  
“What?”  
“I have to go home.”  
“Son, you’re not making any sense-”  
“I - something came up. I have to go home.”

Alex stood, his chair skidding out behind him. The younger man made it almost completely out the door before he realized that he didn’t have his car keys. George swiped them off the table just as Alex rushed back for them.  
“Son, you can’t drive like this. Sit down and calm down. What’s happening?’

After a moment of staring, Alex lowers himself back into his chair. He takes a deep breath and holds it as long as he can manage before releasing it in an exasperated sigh.  
“Phillip-”

His words die in a flurry of thumb movements - texting someone, probably Eliza - and his eyes are far away - years and miles away - when he looks back up.  
“Phillip has a fever.”

***

Alex Hamilton is thirteen years old and his mother is sick.  
“James?”  
“Just a second.”

Typical. He would ignore this.

“Don’t get mad at your brother, ti cheri. He is busy with school.”  
The words were typical; the two brothers fought often and loudly. But the pallor of her richly colored skin, the sheen on her forehead, the slur in her words-  
That wasn’t normal and Alex was worried. Rachel smiled at her youngest son and patted his cheek.  
“Go to school, Alex. I’ll be better when you get home.”

She smiled, and for a second, the thirteen year old believed her. But then she fell back against the pillows, her face drawn and weak, and Alex was worried again. So he left his room and joined his brother in the small kitchen in their box of an apartment in the Bronx.  
“Mom’s sick,” Alex announced when James refused to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  
“Duh. She was talking about her sick coworkers all last week, it’s just her turn.”

Alex pressed his lips into a hard, straight line even as he nodded slowly.

“Okay. I guess. I’m - I’m gonna stay home, though. In case she gets worse.”  
James probably thought that his little brother couldn’t see him roll his eyes. He was wrong. Alexander was just too busy getting a cloth damp to pick a fight about it.  
“Make sure you eat lunch,” was the only thing James said before he walked out of the apartment for school. This time, Alex rolled his eyes as he walked back to their mother’s room.  
She’d fallen back asleep, so Alex just laid the cloth across his mother’s forehead and left the room to watch TV.

***

Washington frowned. Alex was obviously upset, his knee bouncing and his hands itching.  
“How old is the boy?”  
“...Seven months.”

New fathers were notoriously protective of their babies, but this was-  
“Is it the first time he’s been sick?”  
“Yeah.”  
“It’s probably just an ear infection, son, he’ll be fine-”  
“How do you know that?” Alex snapped. George’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t hear that much prepubescent angst since - well, since Alex had almost gotten expelled for inciting a fight. It was true that George Washington had no children of his own blood, that he had never raised an infant to adulthood, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a father - or that he had no experience with babies.  
“...Sorry, sir. That was out of line. Can I have my keys back?’

Alex was going to stand, already stretching out his hand to accept the key ring. Washington hesitated a moment before dropping the keys in the outstretched hand. Alex close his hand around them even as he dug in his wallet for tip money.  
Just as Alex dropped the bills on the table, his phone buzzed again. The young man stopped, texting again. His hand went to the end of his low ponytail and he tugged.  
“I - I have to go.”  
“Go be with your wife, Alexander.”  
“My - my mother…”  
He paused, his dark eyes going distant again. All Washington knew about the woman was that she was dead, had died when Hamilton was a young teenager.  
“My mother died of a fever,” he admitted in a rush, “No one - no one knows but - but Eliza. And you. Now.”

And James, Alex thought, almost adding it aloud, but talking about his mother was enough sharing for one day. His brother was something else entirely.  
For his own part, Washington felt like he’d just been punched in the gut.  
_Oh._

***

The morning passed mostly with just cartoons, but once 10:30 rolled around, the shows were mostly geared to younger kids. So Alexander wandered back to his mother’s room to change out the rag and to see if she was awake or not.  
As it turned out, she was, and she was not happy with Alex.  
“You should not be skipping school, Alexander,” she admonished.  
He just shrugged, changing the cloth.  
“Someone needed to take care of you,” was all he said.  
“You need to take care of your _studies,_ ” she chastised, though the rasp in her voice only undermined the argument, “I can take care of myself.”

Alex didn’t respond, only curling up in the single chair in her room with a book. Eventually, Rachel dropped back into an uneasy sleep and Alex continued to read in his mother’s chair.

Every few chapters, Alex would replace both her drinking water and the cooling rag, as each was required. By the time he started thinking about lunch, Alex started to think that maybe her fever had broken. What he was actually feeling was just the cold water dripping down her face from the rags, not sweat. Little Alex didn’t know to check other places for fever other than just her face.  
So he settled in for the day, content with his ongoing work.

***

Now a young adult and a father of a seven month old, Alex knew better.  
The conversation with his old professor, visiting the city from Virginia for a seminar as a guest speaker had stalled out shortly after his admission.

So Alex apologized and once again rushed out the door, actually capable of leaving this time. And he did. Alex left and made record time getting back to the small apartment that all the Hamiltons currently lived in. Parking took a little longer, but Alex was nothing if not a New York driver, so he was bounding up the steps to his home and wife and son within no time.  
Alex wasn’t a praying man, not anymore, but he prayed that Phillip’s fever would actually break - and soon.

***

By the time James got home from school, Alex had watched everything good on TV, had read his assigned book twice, had cleaned everything he could. So instead, the older Hamilton boy came in to a clean, if quiet, apartment. James found both his mother and brother asleep.  
It was odd that Alex was asleep, James thought with a frown. He was never one to nap out of boredom. Alex was always doing something - useful or not, the younger boy kept himself busy.  
But if Alex wanted to sleep, James would let him. 

Hours later, James woke both other members of his family for supper. Alex looked more tired than he had that morning, but the apartment was nearly spotless.  
Still, James worried at his lip (a habit Alex would pick up and keep even after years of separation) as he watched his younger brother pick at his food.  
“I’ll stay home with mom tomorrow if her fever hasn’t broken by then,” James offered just to break the silence. 

Alex just nodded.

A few similar attempts sizzled out within moments. After returning a mostly-full plate to the kitchen, Alex went to bed in their actual room, on his actual bed.  
James watched his brother leave but said nothing.

***

If Eliza heard the thundering up the steps, she wasn’t surprised when Alexander broke through the door.  
“You didn’t have to come home,” was all she said, frowning a little.  
“I- Phillip’s sick, of course I did.”  
“He would have been fine for you to finish your lunch with Washington.”

Alex had been looking forward to this meeting for nearly two weeks - he hadn’t seen his old mentor since graduation, and it was no secret that Alex and George had a close relationship.  
“I-I had to come home, Eliza.”

His wife was a bright woman. She was an expert in interpreting Alexander Hamilton, one of about three people to be able to claim that title. But Alex didn’t talk about his childhood. He’d told Eliza about his mother, that he’d been with her when she died, and she was the only one he’d told. That had been in the late hours of a night just a few days before their wedding.  
She smoothed his hair, cupping his cheek.  
“He’s okay, Alex. The first illness of many, but he’s a baby. It’s just an ear infection.”

So she didn’t quite remember the haunted look in her then-fiance’s eyes as he told her about the night that left him and his brother orphans. But who could blame her?

Alex worried at his lip, stopping just short of drawing blood. They stood there for just a minute, until Phillip’s thin cry punctured the air from their room. Alex beat his wife into the room by a whole three seconds.

***

It was about three in the morning when James woke up because Alex was talking in his sleep again. The sixteen year old rolled over, groaning and staring disdainfully at the form of his younger brother.  
Then he stopped, the annoyance melting from his face. Alex sleeptalked often - and loudly. That wasn’t a new phenomena. But James had never known his brother to thrash, so James swung out of his own bed and pulled over to Alex’s.  
“C’mon, kid, it’s just a dream,” James murmured, shaking his shoulder. Alex only whimpered, turning away from James.  
“Alex, come on, you need to wake up, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

While the boy didn’t wake up, he did finally calm down, though the worry was still etched on his sleeping face.  
“C’mon, Alexander, get up.”

The full name, still a rarity before he went into the system, finally woke him up. When Alex blinked blearily up at him, James pushed the strands of his younger brother’s hair out of the boy’s face. That was when James felt that Alex was burning up - maybe even worse than their mother.  
Without his brother coherent enough to understand and mimic him, and his mother still asleep and in another room (unable to chastise him), James swore. Loudly.

***

Alex had picked his boy up, whispering softly to the baby. Eliza leaned in the doorway. Watching how her husband completely transformed - how he slowed down and focused entirely on one point in space, for once - with their baby was one of her favorite things. But something had him panicked. Alex had switched to French, and she was good with French, but he was talking too fast and too quietly for her to hear. He kept repeating a single phrase, and the repetition allowed her time to translate.  
“You’re okay, you’ll be okay.”

When Phillip had finally calmed down - had cried himself back to sleep - Alex looked up at Eliza, looking more like a caged animal than a rising star lawyer.  
“‘Liza, he’s burning up.”  
“That’s the fever, babe. He’s too young for Tylenol so he’ll just have to sweat out the fever.”

Alex started to respond, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, the young man just shook his head and started pacing, Phillip still in his arms. 

***

Reluctantly, James woke their mother.  
“Jamie?”  
“Alex has a fever.”  
“Get...the Tylenol.”  
“We ran out yesterday.”  
“In my jewelry box...there’s a little bit of money.”

James squeezed her hand briefly before retrieving the money and leaving the apartment. There was a twenty four convenience store only a block from the apartment, and James looked enough like a grown man that no one would mess with him.  
By some gift of God, James got to the store safely.  
“Pardon me, do you have any pill bottles of Tylenol?”  
“We’re expecting a shipment in two days, son,” the cashier told him without looking up from magazine at his counter. James sighed, grabbing the liquid children’s version. Alex was probably still within the weight range, but their mother-  
The older boy arrived home and found Alex in bed with his mom. Despite being burning hot, Alex was violently shivering, his eyes closed shut against the light in the room.  
“Alex, c’mon. Medicine.” James coaxed his brother into taking a dose and drinking some water before the boy fell into an uneasy doze.  
“They only had the liquid kind,” James told his mother uneasily.  
She smiled at James - tired, but her eyes were more alive.  
“I’ve survived worse, Jamie. I’ll just sweat through it.”

James nodded, quietly leaving the bottle on the side table.

***

“Alex, not eating isn’t going to help Phillip.”  
“Not hungry.”  
“Alex, you’re going to make yourself sick.”  
From where he sat in the living room, Alex froze. He had to force himself to breathe, to not look at the small indent on his left hand.  
“I’m not hungry, Eliza.”

She pursed her lips but let it lie. For a minute.

When Phillip started fussing again, Alex couldn’t get him calmed down. So Eliza took the baby and walking him until he once again fell asleep. Eliza held him for another minute, feeling her son steam and sweat. She disappeared back into their room, putting Phillip in his crib.  
“Feels like his fever’s breaking,” she added.

Alex didn’t respond. When she went back into the living room, he was staring into space, his fingers tracing over the back of his left hand.  
“Okay, what’s wrong with you?” Eliza asked, her hands settling on her hips.  
“What?”  
“I get that you’re worried, but Pip’s okay. What’s wrong with you?”  
Alex sighed, pulling his ponytail out and raking his hand through his hair.  
“Do you remember when...before we knew you were pregnant, when you were sick?”  
“Yeah…”  
“And I freaked out about you being sick?”  
“Yeah…”  
“And when Laurens got sick our senior year right before finals-”  
“Okay, Alex, I get it - you always freak out when people get sick. But why?”

Alex stared up at Eliza, his eyes wide and younger than they’d been even when they first met in their Comp 1 class.  
“-Your mother,” Eliza realized, sitting next to Alex on the loveseat and drawing him into her arms, “Alex, I’m sorry-”  
“It was a long time ago.”

***

The next week passed in the same way. Alex was fighting valiantly, Rachel was waning with every passing day, and James stayed home from school with mounting worry. Rachel kept pushing his attention to Alexander, but the boy was in such a turbulent state that James didn’t know what to do to help him. Alex’s fever had broken no less than five times; it had come back six.  
He was on the up right now, but he still slept in his mother’s bed, for fear of getting James sick. All three of them being sick would have to result in a hospital visit, and they really couldn’t afford that.  
By February 18th, it seemed like a hospital trip would be inevitable. Alex wasn’t getting better, not really, and James had run himself ragged and Rachel was looking more and more like a spectre each day. An exhausted James fell asleep in the same chair that Alex had occupied before getting sick himself.  
That night, Alex’s fever spiked once again. Rachel felt the boy’s body heat and woke up, blinking slowly. She was all but drained. The clock on her bedside table was the only light; it illuminated James’s sleeping form and Alex’s feverish-again body.  
It was just past midnight. Rachel reached her hand over, using the last of her strength to knock the items on her table onto the floor.  
The noise made James shift in his sleep.

Rachel dropped her arm, spent.

An hour after midnight, Alex started making noise like he had that first night. James woke up fully then, his sleep cycle having been broken by the disturbance his mother had made.  
But an hour after midnight on February 19th, their mother was already gone. 

***

“I - I didn’t think anyone could die of a fever,” Alex was saying, his hand still on the ends of his hair, “I was - I was hospitalized for severe dehydration but no actual illness. Not that I know of. James and I were put into the system and-”

And he stopped there because Eliza knew the rest. The Hamilton brothers going into the system; James leaving as soon as he was eighteen; Alex getting bounced around homes until he too become an adult; getting a full ride to Columbia because of a writing contest.  
“We just had a fever,” he whispered.

Eliza put her face into his shoulder. She’d never heard the full story, even when Alex had told her that he’d been present when his mother died.  
“Eliza, I can’t - I - I can’t loose him, I think I might die if I loose him-”

That was when Alexander Hamilton, hot shot lawyer and witty with a pretty bride and a pretty baby, broke down. It came in stops and starts - angry, hot tears that nearly stole his ability to breathe. Eliza couldn’t do anything; couldn’t even tell if he was grieving his mother or raging against his brother and father or fearing for his son.  
So she held him, whispering assurances that she wasn’t sure if he heard.  
“She - she made sure-”  
He was stuttering, slobbering all over his words and Eliza could only partially understand him.  
“Babe, I can’t understand you,” she whispered, running her hands up and down and up and down his back.

Alex took a deep, shuddering breath and scrubbed his face with the heel of his hands.  
“She made James give me everything. We didn’t have the money to get both of us real medicine, so she gave me the best she could. I - I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how anyone would give their life so willingly and purposefully, I didn’t get why she would do that for..for me. I’m - I wasn’t worth it, Eliza, I didn’t think-”

He choked on the shame of it. His admission and the act that caused it: Alex didn’t talk about his mother because he didn’t want to tell anyone that he thought his mother’s dying act had been a wrong one. The words seemed to tear themselves out of his throat, and Eliza wanted nothing more for him to just be able to stop talking, to save himself from the pain of having to admit it - but even the tears and mucus couldn’t stop Alexander now, because he _needed this._  
“I’d do it. I’d do it in a second, I - I get it. I get why she made the decision she did because if anything were to happen to him, I’d give everything to make sure it didn’t take him-”

Eliza didn’t know how to respond to that, so she just held him. She held him as he grieved his mother, now understanding exactly what she had traded. She held him as he begged forgiveness from a woman who had been dead for ten-plus years. She held him as he cried.  
Phillip once again woke up, and the Hamiltons rose together. Eliza looped her arm around Alex’s chest, under his armpits, as they walked. Her husband picked up the baby and held him, much like Eliza had just held her son’s father. 

Alex wiped his face with the free hand. Phillip was still small enough that Alex could carry him with one arm moments at a time - Eliza envied him that - but the young man was occupied with his son and only his son in a flash.  
“He’s gonna be okay,” Alex said, with a new and quiet resolve.  
“You’re gonna be okay,” Eliza murmured, kissing his shoulder.

Alex smiled at his wife, his son tucked against his chest. It was thin and watery, but it was still a smile.

“We’re gonna be okay.”

**~FIN~**

**Author's Note:**

> James and Alexander Hamilton's mother died of a fever and that's as far as anyone knows. Alex was also sick ("Alex got better but his mother went quick"). The brothers were shuffled between family members until they were split up and went to work.  
> I'm not entirely sure how much older James was than Alex, so I kind of fudged that.  
> The title is a slight tag to 1500s/1600s essayists (Francis Bacon and Montaigne) who had this bad habit of starting all their essay titles with "Of". Of Studies. Of A Monstrous Child. Of Truth. There are so many.


End file.
